Ann-Marie MacDonald is named Concordia’s first Richler writer-in-residence

Sir George Williams University — now Concordia — was home to Mordecai Richler for only a few years, but his spirit will be galvanizing a new generation of students.

Concordia’s latest gift from the Richler estate is support for a three-year writer-in-residence program in the late author’s name. The Montreal-based novelist, playwright and Gemini Award-winning actor Ann-Marie MacDonald will be the first to adopt the role.

June 1, 2015Comments Off on Ann-Marie MacDonald chosen as one of the finalists for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

The 2016 Neustadt Prize Finalists (source: The Neustadt Prize)

Ann-Marie has been chosen as one of nine finalists for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The Prize is the most prestigious international literary award given in the United States and is celebrated for its exclusive focus on literary merit.

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a $50,000 biennial prize funded by a generous endowment from the Neustadt family of Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Dallas. The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. The charter of the award stipulates that the Neustadt Prize be conferred solely on the basis of literary merit, and each laureate is chosen by a jury of writers that World Literature Today convenes on the University of Oklahoma campus.

May 10, 2015Comments Off on Review: The New York Times / Sunday Book Review

‘Adult Onset,’ by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Do our more modest northern neighbors talk about the Great Canadian Novel? After all, they have big geography there too — the mountains, the prairies. “Always in view was the vastness of what in most countries would be called a sea but in Canada was known simply as ‘one of the Great Lakes,’ ” the Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald writes in her big, troubling and brave new novel. Books like hers have a continental sweep: The writer amply stocks them with people and ideas, with all she knows. Spare, quiet perfection isn’t the aim. Read more…